Which DAW is fastest to load?

[Michael L]

I've typed this whole reply while I've been waiting for Komplete Kontrol to start and it's still not ready.

I'm sure it does not behave that way for anyone else
You two are a perfect match

[BONES]

AFAIK it behaves exactly the same for my bandmate. He's complained about it to me several times. I can't see how it can possibly be any different for others, unless maybe you have a Maschine hooked up and it is somehow telling the software not to scan your plugins. I've looked, I can't see any way to turn off the scan and if Studio One can scan them in 20 seconds or so, and even Cubase doesn't take much longer, then the problem definitely isn't at my end.

[Reefius]

There must be something very wrong with your setup if Maschine takes 5 minutes to load. I literally have hundreds of plugins installed and it takes 10 seconds for Maschine to start.

[J4R1O]

Cubase Pro 11, 11 seconds. (Windows 10 Pro, Core i9, 32GB, Samsung 980 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD)

[antic604]

Interestingly, the DAWs that load the quickest for me, are the ones I'm closing the fastest, too

[Mumdad]

It loads very quickly anyway but if I set it not to scan VSTs at startup Renoise sometimes feels like it's ready to go before I've even clicked on it.

[EnGee]

Cubase 11 Artist, S1 v5 Pro, Live 10 Suite, Reason 11 lite and KK are all starting in less than 9-10 secs. Only Reaper (v5.99) is less than 4-5 sec. This is scanning enabled with no change in VST folder (adding or deleting a plugin).

When Updating the VST folder, then all are hell slow, even Reaper takes more than one minute. I have Ryzen 5 1600x with 16 GB and SSD M.2 NVM2 500GB with nVidia 1060. (VSTi = 72, VST3i = 45, VST = 33, VST3 = 12).

The problem (still minor for me), as I said, is when loading the project that I'm working with. It takes so long compared to starting in default in all of the DAWs (with relatively various speeds).

[MuzikFreq]

Maybe to some people it's not a DAW and you can only get it with certain purchases buuuut Maschine loads lightning fast.

As to the guy who has 5minute load times.... Please install it to a main drive and not some usb1.0 external
My load time is the fastest with really only a split second load time.

[BONES]

Mine is installed to it's default location, wherever NI wants it to be installed. As I said below, it does a full scan every time I start it and I can't see any way to turn that off.

There must be something very wrong with your setup if Maschine takes 5 minutes to load. I literally have hundreds of plugins installed and it takes 10 seconds for Maschine to start.

Is it doing a full plugin scan every, single time? Mine does, including shit like expired iLok demos, which require me to click on a "Quit" or "Activate" button. It takes forever and it is slow enough that I can actually read each individual plugin name.

[AnX]

I dont think my life has ever been so sad that I felt a need to time how long it takes for my host to open....

[MuzikFreq]

Mine is installed to it's default location, wherever NI wants it to be installed. As I said below, it does a full scan every time I start it and I can't see any way to turn that off.

There must be something very wrong with your setup if Maschine takes 5 minutes to load. I literally have hundreds of plugins installed and it takes 10 seconds for Maschine to start.

Is it doing a full plugin scan every, single time? Mine does, including shit like expired iLok demos, which require me to click on a "Quit" or "Activate" button. It takes forever and it is slow enough that I can actually read each individual plugin name.

I mean, mine scans but it's super quick. All my plugins are also activated already sooo that may make a difference. I did have some kiloheartz stuff for a short bit that would freeze it everytime because the dependency was missing.

[Reefius]

Is it doing a full plugin scan every, single time? Mine does, including shit like expired iLok demos, which require me to click on a "Quit" or "Activate" button. It takes forever and it is slow enough that I can actually read each individual plugin name.

You really need to uninstall all those expired demos. Some basic computer maintenance can go a long way.

That is most likely also the reason why Maschine takes so long to start. Most DAWs have some kind of blacklist for plugins that can't be scanned properly (like those expired demos) so they will not get scanned again in the future.
Maschine does not have such blacklist, so it will attempt to scan those demos at every startup.

[Biome_Digital]

Reaper - about 2 seconds.

[EnGee]

Oh I must say that I feel my PC is "clean" somehow from those "shit" services running at the background. I still have some shit like e-licenser and some Java, Apple and Microsoft (of course) services running, but I don't have Pace (iLok) or Codemeter installed. e-licenser seems to not affect the performance. At least I didn't notice something. I think most of the musical software protection I have are friendly compared to iLok and Codemeter which might cause some problems in loading speeds.

[LeVzi]

Lets not open that can of worms being iLok protection and the impact it has on loading times.

In fact lets not mention iLok at all.


Sssh.. If you dont mention it, it might go away.